


Chasing The Dragon

by agirlnamedtruth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Absinthe, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Dreams, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Hallucinations, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 18:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1276777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agirlnamedtruth/pseuds/agirlnamedtruth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana isn't addicted to the drugs or the drink. She's addicted to dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing The Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the combined prompts "absinthe" and "addicted to you" over at [Camelot Land](http://camelot-land.livejournal.com/).

Morgana knew she had a problem, she wasn't an idiot. Well-to-do ladies brought up in good families didn't lie with their finely combed hair on filthy pillows in opium dens surrounded by addicts, villains and women off ill repute. But she couldn’t stop herself coming back time and again.

Every time Morgana lay down on the threadbare mattress, she told herself she wasn't as bad as them. She wasn't an opium fiend. She didn't do drugs for recreation. She only did it to sleep, perchance to dream. And she only needed this awful place for its discretion. Its total lack of judgement.

She set the silver spoon over the glass of absinthe. She didn't have the stomach to drink it neat and this way, it was a vehicle for her true demon. She set a sugar cube on the spoon, her mind flashing to her mother's silver wear, the perfect tongs she had for fear one should ever do something as primitive as handle sugar with their bare hands. She rolled the cube between her fingertips, as if in protest, before setting it down.

Next, she slipped the glass bottle out of her bag. This was no dangerous opiate they sold here, refined in secret and sold at a high price. This was a proper drug, a _safe_ drug, a medical drug bought legally. But she knew she’d still lose her place at medical school if they found out what she was doing with it. How she was abusing it, abusing her medical understanding of its uses. If she was found out, it would ruin her life. She couldn't exactly explain that she wasn't addicted to the drugs or the drink, she only needed the dreams. She cleared her mind of any thoughts of her inevitable downfall. The dreams were worth the risk.

She pulled the dropper out of the bottle and let several drops of laudanum drip onto the cube. The smell was clinical and slightly heady in of itself. She replaced the dropper and stashed the bottle. She would return it to the medicine cabinet in the morning. Nobody would ever know.

She took a match, dragging it across the rough side of the box until it caught and sparked. She put the match to the cube and watched the flames rise, blowing out the match when it started to burn the tips of her fingers. Breathing in the fumes nearly got her there but she knew from experience that it wouldn't be enough. It would never be enough. She'd never see in the flames what she saw in her dreams.

She upended the spoon, tipping the boiling sugar and laudanum into the absinthe. She knew the tales surrounding absinthe, just as there were tales about opium. But she didn't believe them. Her dreams weren't hallucinations, they weren't fancies, they were real.

She downed the green elixir, the sugar sweetening all the condemnation, silencing all the voices telling her she was just an addict making excuses to justify her next fix.

She laid her head and body down, like she was sinking into warm water, a lake where souls and memories lived forever. She closed her eyes and pulled back the veil, swirling the waters, breaking through.

Her body was irrelevant, her mind and soul divorced from it. She slept in the real world and woke in a world she longed to live in. With knights and sorcerers and a great king. Although her body surrounded by opium addicts, she was the only one truly chasing The Great Dragon.

**Author's Note:**

> As of 01/01/18, I'm opting to disable comments. [More information here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13077201).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [For Who Would Bear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755974) by [eurydice72](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydice72/pseuds/eurydice72)




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